ERIC Number: EJ755517
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2006
Pages: 18
Abstractor: Author
Reference Count: 29
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0256-2928
Writing as a Learning Tool: Testing the Role of Students' Writing Strategies
Kieft, Marleen; Rijlaarsdam, Gert; van den Bergh, Huub
European Journal of Psychology of Education, v21 n1 p17-34 2006
The claim that writing facilitates students' learning, although widely accepted, has little support from empirical research. A possible explanation for the lack of empirical evidence is that writing-to-learn research has disregarded that students use different writing strategies. The purpose of the present experimental study is to test whether it is effective to adapt writing-to-learn tasks to different writing strategies when teaching literature. A course "Learning to write argumentative texts about literature" was developed in two different versions: one adapted to a planning writing strategy, the other to a revising writing strategy. Participants were 113 tenth-grade high school students in the Netherlands. Our hypothesis is an adaptation hypothesis: we expect that the more a student will use a planning writing strategy, the more the student will profit from the lessons in the planning condition, and that the more a student uses a revising writing strategy, the more beneficial the revising condition will be. However, results show that for improving literary interpretation skill, a course adapted to the planning writing strategy is more effective for almost all students. (Contains 9 tables, 2 figures and 2 notes.)
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Writing Strategies, Secondary Education, Grade 10, High School Students, Revision (Written Composition), Writing Processes, Planning
Instituto Superior de Psicologia Aplicada. Rua Jardim do Tabaco, 34, Lisboa 1149-041, Portugal. Tel: +351-21-881-1700; Fax: +351-21-886-0954; Web site: http://www.ispa.pt
Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: High Schools; Secondary Education
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers: Netherlands

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